It was May 2025 when the US-Marcos II Regime unboxed its “new and improved” counter-insurgency plan to end the people’s democratic revolution: the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD) 2025-2028. Couched in doublespeak, it was an obsequious attempt to follow the US counterinsurgency program which was designed to strengthen US geopolitical positioning on the world stage against China.

Using the worn-out “whole-of-government/whole-of-nation” approach (this time refurbished into “whole-of-society”) that has been proven ineffective since many previous administrations, the program continues and intensifies the counterrevolutionary program of the Duterte regime that misrepresents repression as peace and development while ignoring to address the roots of the armed conflict. Economic development becomes a military concern. The NTF-ELCAC is given more powers over civilian bureaucracy and bigger chunks in the government budget. “Counterinsurgency” targets are expanded to include not only revolutionary fighters and activists but whole sectors of society, to “disrupt recruitment” and for “preventing and stopping the resource generation” of both revolutionary and open legal organizations.

But what happens now that instead of weakening, the people’s movement continues to grow?

Within a few months of its three-year implementation, the NAP-UPD’s “fine-tuned” 12 lines of efforts or strategies are showing the program’s inutility in the face of people’s resistance. Here are just a few:

1. Situational Awareness and Knowledge Management (SAKM) purportedly aims to “engage sectors through regular consultation and related activities to surface issues and concerns for resolution.” Priority sectors for “situational awareness campaigns” are “youth and students, teachers, government employees and aspiring candidates for the 2025 and 2028 elections.”

But when the military and NTF-ELCAC held fora in universities, students and teachers, even some administrative personnel denounced these as red-tagging sorties or campaigns to undermine academic freedom. Only the most die-hard government supporters praised its success. Youth and student protests continue to increase both in size and frequency, sprouting even in schools that before were not so active.

2. The propaganda plan under its Strategic Communication (StratCom), seeks “to dominate the information environment and saturate it with messages … and information on government programs.” Early on, there was SIM registration, then strengthening of an Integrated Communications Operations Center and “synchronization of media platforms of all Government Agencies” online and offline. Unwritten, of course, are the employment of troll farms, manufacture of fake news, and harassment of journalists.

Still, alternative media flourishes despite all the harassment and killing of journalists. Only recently, a regional trial court nullified a memorandum of the National Security Council to censor alternative media, thus unblocking 27 websites that have been blocked since 2022. Some sections of mainstream media can no longer disregard the magnitude of people’s protests and are attempting some hesitant coverage of the mass actions in the face of state and corporate censorship.

3. To undermine GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, the NAP-UPD implements Localized Peace Engagements (LPE) or negotiated surrenders at the local level. But no NPA guerrilla front or unit has ever fallen in this trap.

4. The E-CLIP and Amnesty Program (EAP), long known for the spate of fake or rehashed surrenders, still serves as one of the biggest milking cows of military officers. Fake surrenderers get some of the cash while the officer who worked for the surrender pockets the bigger share. Farmers, activists or militiamen who surrender to live their civilian lives peacefully can not avail of the much-vaunted package of money and projects unless they become informers or agents of the military. By agreeing to these conditions, they become even more hunted and hated by their villages, while those who refuse to be used for military operations are immediately sent to jail on trumped up criminal charges. So, villagers and some erstwhile activists have gradually come to realize how illusory the promises of peace and normalcy these programs sell to them.

5. Legal Offensives mean weaponizing the law through the Anti-Terror Law (ATL) and the Anti-Financing Terrorism Law (AFTL). The NTF-ELCAC not only intensified its efforts in seeking terrorist proscription for revolutionary organizations but in freezing bank accounts of legal, pro-people programs and institutions; and, efforts at delisting targetted partylist groups. With the Regional Legal Action Groups, the NTF-ELCAC increased its stable of paid, all-purpose, ready-to-use “surrenderer” witnesses for this. And not only the ATA and AFTA are used. Tons of laws, some even Presidential Decrees issued during Martial Law, are dug out of the dust to use against rallyists and bystanders during the mass arrests and police brutality of September 21. The police have even gone to the extent of issuing warrants of arrests against student leaders in their schools.

The US line requires the elimination of the
people’s army and its revolutionary mass base to
be able to focus on the China matter.

And yet, human rights organizations report an increasing number of dismissals of trumped-up charges and more political prisoners being released. Activists and lawyers are pushing back on the legal front, standing for their rights, and suing military and NTF-ELCAC personnel for abuses.

6. Another source of easy wealth for military officials is the Infrastructure and Resource Management (IRM) of the NAP-UPD. Since these projects are below the required amount for compulsory bidding and located in far-flung areas, there are no oversight mechanisms to check them. Thus, the purported aim to “expedite delivery of basic services to localities” are only used as excuses for military units to stay and “hamlet” a village in the guise of protecting the project. The targeted 9,272 barangay listed in the action plan are noticeably located in areas designated for Focused and Sustained Military Operations (FSMO). Peasant communities and indigenous peoples have continuously exposed and opposed these projects for the sham that they are.

7. But it is in the item Peace, Law Enforcement and Development Support (PLEDS) that the NAP-UPD does not bother to mask the fangs of militarization. The program to launch the military’s massive, “intelligence-driven operations” against guerrilla fronts, expansion areas and units of the people’s army includes organizing additional paramilitary units as “Barangay Peacekeeping Institutions.”

While aerial bombings, hamletting and forced evacuation continue in the countryside, urban poor communities and schools are becoming targets of militarization, with military detachments being set up in communities of the urban informal sector where people’s organizations are most active.

Like all “counterinsurgency” programs based on ruling class interests, the NAP-UPD will fail long before its 2025-2028 plan is even over.

The US line requires the elimination of the people’s army and its revolutionary mass base to be able to focus on the China matter. Thus, the NAP-UPD plans to have the AFP gradually focus on external defense and leave “counterinsurgency” to the police. This remains a big problem for the US-Marcos regime, since with the deepening political rivalries within the ruling class, the police and the military are being to drawn to defend or support either of the factions.

At the same time, the military and police have to deal with the growing militance of the urban open mass movement and the continuing resistance of the armed struggle in the countryside.

There will be the necessary adjustments to the NAP-UPD as the people’s movement surges forward. But whatever additional repressive and deceptive measures they plan and implement, the people will rise and oppose it. Like all “counterinsurgency” programs based on ruling class interests, the NAP-UPD will fail long before its 2025-2028 plan is even over. As long as the evils of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism remain to oppress this land, their best-laid plans will not stop the national democratic revolution. ### (Silvia Madiaga)